In the case of disconnecting Russian banks from SWIFT, you will have to make a choice of what is more important - equipment for oil production or goods for people

Banking super -mixer

The easiest analogue of the Swift system is a messenger. Here's how you exchange “through messenger” messages and files, so banks exchange “through SWIFT” with payment orders.

The SWIFT abbreviation decodes from English as Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. Translated into Russian, this means "community of the World Interbank Telecommunications." This community has been working since 1973 in accordance with Belgian law. Swift co -founders were 239 banks from 15 countries. The SWIFT payment system developed by the community has become a leading international system in the field of financial telecommunications. It provides an operational, safe and absolutely reliable transfer of financial messages around the world. SWIFT - a paid service and quite expensive - up to $ 200 thousand for connecting each new client. The cost of annual service is about 10 thousand euros.

Today, about 11 thousand financial companies in 200 different states are “connected” to SWIFT.

Swift is an unconditional leader among existing international money transfers. As of January 2021, SWIFT recorded an average of 42.1 million messages per day. More than 1 million different transactions pass through it daily, and per year their number exceeds 2.5 billion

According to the SWIFT report for December 2021, almost 45% of the SWIFT traffic falls on payment messages, 49% are transactions with securities, and the remaining traffic falls on the treasury and system transactions.

Bitters

“Disconnecting from SWIFT” is an extreme measure, and it is used in exceptional cases.

The analogue that is most suitable for the current situation is the disconnection of Iran banks from this system in 2012. In the first year of Iranian GDP sanctions decreased by $ 75.5 billion, export of goods decreased by $ 21.5 billion, and inflation increased by 12.5%. But, we must understand that “disconnection from Swift” was part of the sanctions measures against the Iranian government and business, and it is very difficult to determine which “part” the economy lost directly due to the disconnection from SWIFT.

Will Russian international trade stop the disconnection from SWIFT? No.

But it will slowly slow it down and complicate.

The fact is that SWIFT is not only a service for transferring payment orders, but also a range of other services that help to conduct international business and receive information about the state of transaction. In addition to interbank payments, these are also business analytics panels displaying messages and trade flows in real time; Support for SWIFT applications, such as trade in the Forex market; banking infrastructure and infrastructure of the securities market; Financial communication software based on SWIFT messages, such as Alliance Messaging Hub and Swift Integration Layer (SIL). Plus, SWIFT are reporting systems that help financial institutions observe international sanctions, the rules of “Know your client” (KYC) and the rules for combating money laundering (Aml).

To understand what the shutdown from SWIFT is for the bank - imagine that you will have to solve today's tasks by working on a computer from the 1990s, with Slow Internet and without applications and modern services. Button phones, fax, tex. Paper payments. Cash packages.

Yes, of course, in Russia there is an “Swift analogue” - “system of transferring financial messages” (SPFS) of the Bank of Russia. More than 350 financial organizations are connected to it.

But, the key point here is the desire of external partners to cooperate with Russian banks in principle. You can connect to the "system" - but you can not make the "system" connect to you -

Work with you as a reliable partner.

Wage paths

Iran once found such “allies” that helped him in conducting international transactions bypassing the sanctions regime. True, it cost it all very expensive, and both sides. There was a case when the British bank Standard Chartered paid more than $ 327 million, for the assistance of the Iranian bank in the passage of sanctions limiting oil export. The scheme there was one - the buyer acquired oil from the Iranian partner, and transferred money to the account to the bank, located outside the territory of Iran. Then this amount was transferred to the account of the American bank, and it was already converted to US dollars, after which this money was transferred to another foreign bank to the account, from which the money went to the Islamic Republic. As a result, Iran received funds in US dollars.

Of course, the costs of all these transactions were shifted to consumers.

Plus-Iran was very helped out by the medieval “haval”-an informal Middle Eastern financial and settlement system based on the interim of requirements and obligations. How it worked-in the most general form-for example, you need to transfer money from Tehran to New York-you come to a broker in Tehran, who is calling for New York, and agrees on this deal. In New York, the client will be given the right amount “under the honest word” of a person who sits in Tehran and guarantees, they say, everything is in order, there is money. Then, in New York, someday there will be someone who needs to pay in Tehran-he will come to the Havala broker and he will call the partner in Tehran. At the same time, formally, no cross -border transactions are carried out - money in both cases remains “domestically”. But such a story requires an exceptional level of trust between all participants in this business. And, yes, this is a cost story, the services of such a broker were expensive.

And in the current situation, it is far from the fact that potential partners of Russian banks will help them. Or will assign an extreme price for this help

Oil swings instead of toys and boots

What awaits the Russian consumer in case of disconnecting leading banks of the Russian Federation from SWIFT? Big problems with market filling. Financiers and entrepreneurs will have to choose priorities in payment of procurement - roughly speaking, decide what is more important - to conduct transactions for the purchase of industrial equipment, critical for Russian industry and oil production, or pay containers with women's boots and children's toys. It is clear that consumer goods will “go to payment” last - the authorities made it clear a hundred times how they are annoyed by the desire of Russians to buy high -quality goods abroad, which are paid at the expense of precious foreign exchange earnings.

Old reserves will be used for some time-at an increased price-and then the “optimization of the assortment” will come-the necessary minimum will fall into the Russian market.

Trade will remain, only only it will be smaller and more expensive, many small enterprises in this area will reduce their activities. Their employees will have to roughly take a “shovel in their hands” - the prices for their work will fall.

Less assortment, above the price, even if it is the goods of the “domestic manufacturer”. If previous sanctions almost did not hurt the filling of the Russian consumer market and the household comfort of Russians, then everything is much more serious here.

However, this fully fits into the long -term strategy of the authorities - the oilollars should only go to ensure the priorities of the highest contour of the economy - the export of raw materials and pay for the functioning of the authorities in every sense. Everyone who is not included in this circuit will have to work for the owners of the country for the minimum amount - why do they still have access to the international banking system and imported goods?

However, there is another option - the system of Russian international calculations can go under the control of Chinese banks, participants in the CIPS system - this is such a “Chinese Swift”. And then the priorities of transactions for the Russian market will be determined taking into account Chinese interests.